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The Opera Lively Serial Novel Project - "Opera Deadly"

Back in my college teaching days, I had my students write serial novels. Each person would contribute a chapter, one after the other, letting the story develop freely. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But it was always an interesting challenge.

I thought we might write our own opera-related serial novel. I know most of us aren't professional authors, but we all enjoy writing (or we wouldn't be here). Anyway, this type of collaborative method isn't intended to produce a masterpiece. But with such a bright group of people, we may come up with something fun and memorable. So take a chance and join in!

Judging from the general manager's explanations, this was a terrible accident that could not possibly have happened. Detective Green listened with great patience. Evidently, all imaginable precautions were taken, and the idea was so ridiculous that no precautions would even have been needed. The Rorschach-blot shaped stain of blood on the stage floor in front of them was a reminder that something had happened.
...

Detective Risi’s office was not the tidiest Detective Karen Lindstrom had ever seen. She was not the world’s tidiest person herself, but she at least tried to keep her office somewhat tidy. Her apartment was an entirely different matter, but she did not have many visitors, and did not really see the point of cleaning at home.
...

Linda Freeman took a slow deep breath to relax her body and steady her nerves. Funny, she thought, how even after all her time on stage she could still get butterflies waiting to go on. The butterflies would be replaced with exhilaration, she knew, as soon as she stepped onstage. Or at least they normally would have, had it not been such a sad time for the opera world.
...

At last she awoke. As her eyes cleared, she sat up and looked around her. She was on a canopied bed, in a room with stone walls and a vaulted ceiling, filled with bouquets of flowers on ornate metal stands. From far away came the echo of a piano playing a mournful étude.
...

Linda struggled to loosen her corset as she paced around her prison.
Her captor had taken her wig and hairpins while she slept, but otherwise
she still remained in costume. Upon further inspection of her quarters,
she noticed a plain wardrobe partly hidden by the flowers.
...

The new tenor was not so able a vocalist, or nearly as photogenic, as Marcello Gui. Still, he wasn't bad for short notice, and was holding up reasonably well under the added pressure of a live broadcast. The Opera Goes to the Movies series, far too lucrative to pass up, was going ahead as planned.
...

“IDIOT, FOOL!” The bald man screamed, his face red with rage. He
dropped the whip and stepped over the gasping girl. “My son,” he
sneered, slowly advancing on John.

“Father, I—” John whimpered, as his father slapped him. Tears started
to build in his eyes when he saw what his father was waiting for. The
look he gave him was an invitation, as if he were saying, “You want her,
try to take her.” John wouldn’t challenge him, though. He never
challenged his father. Grabbing Linda by her hair, the older man turned
away.
...

“The worst part was the smell,” Karen adds, still dizzy, sitting on the floor of the restroom, her left cheek resting on the toilet bowl.
“Don’t think about it, Karen. In this line of work, I’ve seen worse.” Joe Green tenderly cleans his colleague’s face with a tissue, removing the little fragments of her last meal still dangling from her lips. He flushes the toilet. “Are you OK now, Karen?”
...

The house stood alone on a hill on the outskirts of the city. A man was standing on the balcony right outside the 2nd story study. It was a cold night, and there was really no reason for him to be standing outside; his arthritis had been acting up lately. He could have sent one of the servants. Still, he had to see it himself. The servants could not be trusted anymore. And they were almost listening. Only here could he be safe. But still, he would manage.
...

“Antonio, I heard what happened to that Crivelli woman yesterday.” The old woman paused and nervously fingered her handkerchief. “Those other recent deaths of opera people didn’t register with me, for some reason. But, when I heard about the latest –“ She paused again and looked him straight in the eyes. “What I want to know is – did you have anything to do with it?”
...